Note 40 — ON MEANS AND ENDS

Zoffani, a foreign artist, but who, by long residence in England, had got our habits of indolence and dilatoriness, was employed by the late King, who was fond of low comedy, to paint a scene for Reynolds’s Speculation; in which Quick, Munden, and Miss Wallis were introduced. The King called to see it in its progress; and at last it was done—‘all but the coat.’ The picture, however, was not sent and the King repeated his visit to the artist. Zoffani with some embarrassment said, ‘It was done all but the goat‘—‘Don’t tell me,’ said the impatient monarch; ‘this is always the way: you said it was done all but the coat the last time I was here.’—‘I said the goat, and please your Majesty.’—‘Aye’ replied the King, ‘the goat or the coat, I care not which you call it; I say I will not have the picture,’—and was going to leave the room, when Zoffani, in an agony, repeated, ‘It is the goat that is not finished,’—pointing to a picture of a goat that was hung up in a frame as an ornament to the scene at the theatre. The King laughed heartily at the blunder, and waited patiently till the goat was finished. Zoffani, like other idle people, was careless and extravagant. He made a fortune when he first came over here, which he soon spent: he then went out to India, where he made another, with which he returned to England, and spent also. He was an excellent theatrical portrait-painter, and has left delineations of celebrated actors and interesting situations, which revive the dead, and bring the scene before us.